2. Hannah
2
HANNAH
I t was unfair that I woke up smelling like sins I had not actually partaken of. Cigarette smoke from the nicotine addicts who had huddled in the doorway of the Painted Cat, not bothering to avert their exhales as I passed. Stale beer from the guy who had jostled his mug against my back. Colognes both masculine and feminine. I sniffed my sweater and winced.
Ugh.
I did not believe for one second that Zack would be ready to go at eight a.m. Not after the six beers he’d consumed last night. Ranch chores and rodeo events were one thing, but I couldn’t expect my sewing club to outweigh his hangover. He didn’t even know me.
Except for my name, apparently.
And the way he said it, like he did actually know me. I was so used to people looking straight through the nerdy girl with her nose buried in a book or an embroidery project. That was fine. I was comfortable with being invisible. Even if it stung sometimes.
Zack Hale, the golden rodeo star of Aspen Springs who probably had so many notches on his bedpost there wasn’t any wood left to notch, was the last person I ever expected to notice me.
But noticing was a long way from caring, and while I believed Zack was the sort of good-natured, golden-retriever type who always meant well, I wasn’t going to stake my reputation on him dragging his hungover body out of bed just so I’d be on time for sewing club, which was why I was on his doorstep at precisely 7:52.
I still gave him the benefit of the doubt and knocked first, though. After a suitable pause, my ear pressed to the wood to listen for sounds of life and hearing nothing, I pushed open the door.
And froze.
Because there was Zack, very much awake, standing by the window in a puddle of spilled sunshine, black headphones over his ears, fuzzy pink bunny slippers on his feet, and not a stitch of clothing to be found anywhere in between. He cradled a white bowl in one broad palm while he shoveled ramen noodles into his mouth with chopsticks. He should have looked ridiculous, but with the morning light sliding over his sculpted muscles like liquid gold, he could not have looked more perfect if Michaelangelo had carved him from marble.
I could feel heat spreading from my cheeks down my throat, but Zack didn’t seem at all bothered. He didn’t yelp or move to cover himself. Instead, he glanced at the oven clock and slurped up another mouthful of ramen.
“Hannah,” he said, a little too loudly, making me startle. He dropped the chopsticks into the bowl and tugged off the headphones, leaving them to circle his neck. “Want some breakfast?” he asked in a normal-volume voice.
I didn’t fluster easily, but good lord.
Fuzzy pink bunny slippers.
“My eyes are up here, Hannah Bell,” he said.
Mortified to be caught looking down—at his slippers , not there —my gaze snapped to his face.
“My feet were cold. The slippers were a Christmas present.” He grinned. “Breakfast? It’s my own personal hangover cure. Ramen and ginger ale.”
“No, thank you. I’ll grab something from Jo’s on the way to the library.” I glanced at the clock. 7:55. “If I have time. You said you’d be ready to go at eight.”
“And I will be. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that, darlin’. I still have five—four minutes. Plenty of time.”
My mouth fell open as he resumed his naked ramen eating. Calmly. Like he really and truly believed that four minutes was more than enough time to go from bunny slippers to fully dressed.
I started to twitch.
He eyed me curiously. “You all right there, sugar?”
“I’m fine,” I lied as I fell apart inside. Not because an extra five minutes would ruin my day. It probably wouldn’t matter much at all either way. And still the anxiety of whether he would make his self-imposed deadline made my blood pressure rise.
“If you wanted me ready at 7:59, you should have said so.”
“No, it’s fine.” I showed him my teeth in what I meant to be a calm, carefree smile. Judging from the way his eyes widened, and his last bite of ramen went down with a sputtered cough, I did not succeed.
“I only need sixty seconds.” He tilted the bowl to his mouth and slurped up the last of the broth. The lines of his throat bobbed in deep swallows. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and dumped the empty bowl and chopsticks in the sink. “Time me.”
“What?” I asked.
It was hard to make sense of his words when ninety-nine percent of my brain was occupied with the way his body turned mundane tasks into poetry. Even the way he limped slightly, favoring the leg that had been broken several times over in a rodeo incident, was elegant. And in bunny slippers. It shouldn’t have been possible.
“Time me,” he repeated. His eyes glinted with challenge. “Sixty seconds.”
Time him? The man was stark naked and he wanted to play games? The whole situation was absurd. Zack Hale was clearly a deeply unserious man and I…I had never been silly in my entire life.
It didn’t bother me. I liked who I was.
But the way Zack looked at me made me want to test him. To see if he could do something I thought was impossible. I wanted him to prove me wrong. I wanted him to impress me. And somehow none of that seemed silly at all.
I pulled out my phone and swiped to the stopwatch on the clock app. “Go.”
He didn’t hesitate for even a millisecond—I had the stopwatch to prove it—before kicking off the slippers and tumbling over the back of the sofa. He landed on the cushions with a soft bounce that propelled him back onto his feet, now with a pair of black boxer briefs in his hand.
Convenient that he had a basket of clean laundry right there, I supposed, although I did wonder exactly how long it had been there.
Zack leaned against the armrest for balance as he pulled his underwear up to mid-thigh, then reached one long arm behind himself to grab his jeans. Both legs went on at once and he pulled his jeans and underwear up together.
My gaze stayed glued to the rapidly increasing numbers while Zack moved in a blur. “Twenty-five seconds,” I warned.
He tugged a white t-shirt over his head. I spared a millisecond of pity for my future self, who would never have the opportunity to look at that six-pack again.
“Thirty-three seconds,” I said.
He slipped his arms through a red-checked flannel. When his fingers moved at the neck like he meant to button the damn thing, I made a low keen of distress. He laughed. “Just teasing, darlin’.”
He was already onto his wool socks when I said crisply, “Thirty-nine seconds.”
He wiggled his right foot into one of the worn cowboy boots by the door, then braced his side against the wall while he went for his left. “Don’t hit stop yet. I’ve got one more thing.”
“Fifteen seconds left.” My voice was sharp with nerves.
Zack pushed his hand into the mess of coats and hats that hung on the wall and pulled out a leather belt with a shiny red buckle. He threaded it through the loops of his jeans with a rough efficiency that made my mouth go dry. His fingers were so nimble . Metal clanged against metal as he buckled it. “Time.”
I hit stop. “Fifty-eight seconds.”
Zack’s shit-eating grin could melt snow. “Well, would you look at that. And it’s eight on the dot.”
His hands went to his hips and my eyes went there, too, landing on the travesty of a belt buckle between them. It was a cherry-red enamel rectangle the size of my fist. RIDE, it proclaimed in shiny gold letters above a cowboy on a bucking bronco.
I wondered how many women had taken him up on that suggestion. Not that I cared. But I wondered.
“Let’s go, darlin’,” he said as he opened the door and motioned me to go through ahead of him. “You don’t want to have to tell your sewing club you were late because you were busy gawking at my crotch.”
“I’m not gawking.” I marched past him with a withering stare. “I’ve gone blind. My eyeballs are so horrified by your belt buckle that they’ve mutinied.”
He chuckled. “I’d take offense, but given what you’re wearing, I think it’s safe to assume you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I unlocked my car, frowning down at myself. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Nothing at all. Just tell me where the portal is to 1852. I don’t want to accidentally fall through.”
“I like my clothes. They’re comfortable.”
I hiked up my skirt to mid-calf so I could get into the car without dragging the fabric in the dirt. Zack tilted his head sideways, his body following, like he was trying to see what I had on underneath. But that couldn’t be right. For one, he couldn’t see anything more than my ankle from that angle. For another, Zack might be the only man in Aspen Springs who knew my name, but he had a very obvious preference in women, and I was not it.
“What are you doing?” I asked bluntly.
He jerked upright. “Trying to figure out what’s so comfortable about a skirt you constantly have to tug at just so you can sit down.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a lot more comfortable than being constricted by jeans.”
The truth was, when I left the Nevada compound at fourteen, I had been so excited to wear jeans and tank tops, like every other girl I saw at gas stations and highway diners on our way to my brother’s ranch in Wyoming. They all looked so carefree. So normal . But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I looked weird in normal clothes. I was sure people were staring at me. I was so uncomfortable.
So now I wore the long skirts every girl wore at the compound. The funny thing was, even though I knew my clothes made me stand out, I wasn’t uncomfortable with it at all. I felt like myself.
I pulled onto the dirt driveway, which would eventually turn to a gravel road for another couple miles before we finally reached actual pavement. Lodestar Ranch was maybe a third the size of what it once was when Zack’s great-great-great-great grandfather bought the land in the gold rush of the eighteen hundreds, according to old maps and deeds we kept on microfiche at the library, but it was still a few hundred acres. Its pastures stretched all the way to the mountains.
“Right there,” Zack said as we bumped past a pasture on the outskirts of the property. “That’s where we’ll set up staging.”
“What staging?” I asked distractedly, all my focus dedicated to getting my twelve-year-old Subaru out of here in one piece. “Parking and all that.”
“For your rodeo.”
That got my full attention. “You’ll do it?” I squeaked. “You’ll help me?”
He grabbed the steering wheel and steered us around a sharp dip, then leaned back with an easy smile.
“Yeah, Hannah Bell. Let’s do the damn thing.”
Zack had given me plenty of time to shower, change, and feed my cats before I was due at the library. Annabelle, Lillian, Evie, Daisy, and Lord St. Vincent—named after characters in my favorite book series—were clearly confused that I had spent the night elsewhere, but they happily wrapped themselves around my ankles to show they were glad for my return. Except for Annabelle, my old gray tabby, who would rather die than show unearned affection.
My little bungalow was a two-mile walk from the library. Aspen Springs was a very car-centric—or, to be precise, truck -centric—town, but I liked to be on foot anytime the weather would allow it. It had taken two years for people to stop shouting offers to give me a ride out their windows. Now they rolled on by with a honk or a wave.
Today was gorgeous, perfect for a brisk walk, despite last night’s sudden snowstorm. People around here liked to say, if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes, it will change. That change wasn’t always for the better. Aspen Springs was nestled in the Rocky Mountains, between the Front Range and the San Juan. The weather tended to be as wild as the scenery.
There were patches of snow on lawns, and some deeper drifts where the shadows were darkest, but the street was clear, and so was the sidewalk—when there was one. The Colorado sunshine was a force to be reckoned with.
My stomach was in danger of cannibalizing itself from hunger by the time I reached Jo’s, the only coffee shop within a twenty-mile radius. Chain restaurants had been banned decades ago, which sounded like a quaint, darling idea until it was three a.m., you’re muttering one more chapter for the tenth time, and would do murder for a bean burrito with globs of cheese or hot, salty fries.
The good thing about Jo’s was the pastries were baked fresh every day and she kept a decent selection of teas. Jo Ramirez—whom no one ever called Josephine—was somewhere between the age of fifty-five and seventy-five. It was hard to tell. She had salt-and-pepper hair she kept short, smooth brown skin without a line to be seen anywhere, and a wiry frame that reminded me of a ballet dancer.
She also had no sense of humor. I knew this because the first time I met her, I pointed out how fortuitous it was that her name was slang for coffee, given her chosen profession. She had stared at me like I was speaking Latin.
Exactly how I had stared at Zack this morning, probably.
It was possible she had heard that joke before.
I indulged in a cranberry-orange muffin and a nice Earl Grey tea. I didn’t have time to sit down for a decent breakfast, so I ate it as I walked the block from Jo’s to the library. After a quick stop in the ladies’ room to wash the muffin oils from my hands so I wouldn’t stain the fabrics, I found everyone waiting for me in the sole multipurpose room.
“You’re not wearing yesterday’s clothes,” Janie said as I walked in.
James, Chloe, and Essie stopped sorting their embroidery projects. They looked at me and then at Janie.
“Why would she be wearing yesterday’s clothes?” Chloe asked. Her head tilted and I could practically see the gears turning. She knew where Janie worked Friday nights, so those gears didn’t have to turn far. “Ohhh, was this a walk of shame situation?” she squealed.
“I gave Zack a ride home, that’s all.” Not that I had anything against one-night stands, for other people. I had tried one, once. It hadn’t been a good fit. “You promised you wouldn’t say anything, Janie.”
Janie arched an auburn brow. “That’s not how I remember it. You said, if I show up to our sewing club tomorrow in yesterday’s clothes, I don’t want to hear a word about it . And you didn’t. So…” Her voice trailed off with a grin.
“You drove all the way from town to Lodestar Ranch and back again?” James asked. I couldn’t tell if she looked suspicious or concerned. “In the snowstorm?”
“No, I stayed in Brax’s cabin,” I said.
“Huh.” Essie bared her teeth in a grimace. “I think we washed those sheets recently?” She said it like she had doubts.
I wrinkled my nose. Ew.
“You should have stayed with Zack,” Essie said. “Had that one-night stand. He’s like the Statue of Liberty or Paris. Something everyone should do once.”
“I’ve never been to Paris,” I said. “Or seen the Statue of Liberty.”
“Yeah, well, no one in this sewing club has fucked Zack, either, and that’s a crying shame, quite frankly.” Essie tossed her hair—she had recently traded rainbow ends for bright pink highlights framing her pretty face, a purposeful, defiant clash with the deep red lipstick she always wore—and thumped her fist on the laminate table. “Someone needs to fact check his reputation, dammit. For science .”
All four of them were staring at me now with amused, knowing smirks. I had seen those looks before, always directed at another member of the sewing club when she found herself entangled with one of the infamous Hale brothers. First James, when she started sleeping with her boss, Adam Hale. Then Essie, when she went from hating Brax Hale to marrying him.
I knew that look. They wanted gossip. Entertainment. Things no one had ever looked to me to deliver, and with good reason. Fitting in never came naturally to me. These women—James, Essie, Chloe, and Janie—were the first real friends I had ever had, and even so, I was still on the outskirts of the friend group, watching wistfully as the others formed tighter bonds that I simply didn’t know how to forge.
I wanted to. I wanted to so very badly.
Obviously, I wasn’t going to agree to sleep with Zack as a science experiment just to have something to bond over, but I wanted to give them something .
“I saw Zack naked,” I blurted out.
The smirks immediately shifted to gaping jaws.
“Details!” Chloe demanded.
James laughed. “What she means is, how did that happen?”
“No, what I mean is, how big was his dick?” Chloe clarified.
“Oh, um…” I faltered. Wasn’t that private? On the other hand, so many other people had seen Zack naked and talked about it that he probably wouldn’t care. “Well, he wouldn’t be popular in ancient Greece, that’s for sure.” I laughed at my own joke.
James, Chloe, Essie, and Janie did not laugh. They stared at me blankly.
“Because the ancient Greeks preferred men with small penises?” I tried. When they kept staring at me like I was speaking, well, Greek, I explained, “Like Aristophane said. The ideal man had a strong butt, small tongue, and little prick. Big dicks meant big dick energy, and the ancient Greeks saw that as a bad thing. Men should be rational, intelligent, and not guided by passion.”
“Huh.” Janie blinked. “But I’ve seen Troy . They literally fought wars because they were all thinking with their dicks.”
“I think that’s Aristophane’s point,” I said.
“Huh,” she said again.
“Alright, we’ve established that the Hale brothers would not have been model Greek citizens, due to their penis size,” Essie said. “Now, how did this happen? Were you naked, too?”
“No, I was not naked,” I said.
I told them the whole story. They hooted with laughter at every new detail. The earphones. The ramen. How he had told me to time him getting dressed, and how I had actually agreed. The god-awful belt buckle.
But I didn’t tell them about the bunny slippers. It seemed too intimate, somehow. Which was ridiculous, because I had told them all about his dick size, so why should slippers be a bridge too far?
Maybe it was that he hadn’t seemed at all bothered that I’d seen his penis, but he felt the need to explain the slippers.
He probably didn’t care, and I was just imagining him to have depth he didn’t possess. A hundred other women had seen him in those slippers, probably.
But still, I kept it to myself.